by April White
Sheesh!
I was extra careful to be quiet as I closed the cellar doors behind me and slipped around the outside of the castle to the solarium. The window was unlatched and I was able to slither inside without any obvious breaking-and-entering noises.
I didn’t meet anyone on my way to Mr. Shaw’s office and wasn’t sure what I’d say if I had. My stomach was still tied up in knots from Archer’s kiss and I was afraid it was written all over my face.
I had no idea what I felt, only that I really felt. Everything. It was like my skin was on fire and every nerve-ending was exposed. I felt raw and totally vulnerable in a way I’d never experienced before. Definitely not the way to feel when I was about to face the Bear. But it was either go to him or he would come and find me, and I wasn’t currently staying anyplace I wanted to be found.
I tapped lightly at his office door.
“Come.” His voice was gruff and not terribly friendly, and my stomach butterflies turned to nerves as I opened the door.
“Close it behind you.” He barely looked up from the microscope slide he was studying and I was very aware of feeling about six years old.
I stood in front of his desk until he finally finished studying the slide. The expression on his face when he looked up was completely neutral and I actually wished for anything else. Even anger would have been better than the wall of silence that stood between us.
Then his eyes narrowed, and I took back my wish for anger.
“You smell of him.”
“I tried on some of his clothes—“ Mr. Shaw’s eyebrows nearly rose off his forehead and I quickly continued. “He still has things that fit the time period. I need to be able to blend in as much as I can.”
“Indeed.” The dryness of his voice was positively Sahara-like. He regarded me for a very long moment. “I found some of your hair on my sweater tonight after we… fought.”
I got defensive instantly. “So?”
“So I finally saw what you discovered when you examined our hair side by side.”
Uh oh. I winced in anticipation of the thing that hadn’t been said out loud, not by me, not by anyone. The thing I’d been dreading and fearing since the last time I was in his office.
“You have Shifter blood in you.”
Mr. Shaw’s voice was completely dead, like he couldn’t quite process the aberration that stood before him. I crossed my arms tightly and glared at him.
“My mother is the only one who knows anything about what I am, and it clearly hasn’t bothered her for seventeen years.”
His eyes widened in surprise and he was about to say something when his office phone rang. Saved by the effing bell. I almost turned and left, but the fierce look on his face stopped me. He held up a finger as he spoke into the phone. “Yes?” His eyes locked on mine. “Yes, Jane. She’s here.” His gaze was completely unwavering. “Indeed. I’ll ask her.” He listened a few more moments, then, “I’ll let you know.” He hung up the phone with a soft ‘click’ and took a deep breath.
Mr. Shaw’s eyes narrowed. “Miss Simpson tried to find you earlier. I believe you are Miss Walter’s roommate, are you not?” I didn’t move a muscle to confirm or deny. “Miss Simpson said there appeared to be no trace of your presence in the dorm room that was assigned to you.”
This felt like one of those moments of choice. Make up a story or come clean? At this point it wasn’t actually much of a contest and I was trying to figure out how to explain where I’d gone when Mr. Shaw suddenly stood right in front of me in full rage.
“I take it that means you’ve moved in with the Sucker, in whatever den he’s managed to find for himself?” I was shocked into speechlessness. What the hell? The guy was prepared to believe I was a slut with no benefit of the doubt whatsoever. And who did he think he was anyway?
I glared at him. “You’ve basically accused me of sex and lies, so I guess there’s nothing else for me to do than prove you right.” I spun on my heels and marched toward the office door.
“You come back here, young lady. We’re not finished yet!”
He was growling now, but I matched his tone with my fiercest voice. “I’m totally finished with you and with this whole place! I was brought here against my will and held captive by doors, dogs and Werewolves. You were the one person I thought was human enough to teach me something I wanted to learn, but you’re just like everyone else – ready to believe the worst! Well, you’ll be happy to know you’re right about me. You all are!”
I bolted from Mr. Shaw’s office before my tears of rage blinded my vision. I needed to run because I knew he would chase me. And he did. The Bear believed I was hiding somewhere in the castle with Archer and he wouldn’t rest until he found out where.
Mr. Shaw was fast, but I was faster, and way more agile than he was. Luckily for both of us everyone was already in their rooms for the night because we were both going full speed and would have knocked over anyone in our way.
I couldn’t go to my room; that would lead him directly to my hideaway. And I certainly couldn’t go to Archer’s room in the cellar, even if I could think of a way to get past the Werewolves that were by now surely patrolling the outside grounds. That pretty much just left the towers.
I took a staircase three steps at a time and managed to gain some distance on him as I turned down a back hallway. I could hear Mr. Shaw pounding after me, his breath coming in steady pants much like the animal he could turn into. I ducked out of sight as a bedroom door opened and Mrs. Taylor’s head popped out. I was already up another staircase when I heard her exclaim, “Mr. Shaw! Whatever are you doing?”
He gasped an answer I didn’t hear. I thought about going to my tower, the Clocker Tower, and bolting through the painting. He certainly couldn’t follow me there. But no one except Ava and Adam knew about the painting and I wanted to keep it that way.
So I switched direction – to their tower. If the secret doorway didn’t thwart Mr. Shaw, maybe the warded room might. It was worth a shot.
I took staircases two steps at a time, hallways at a dead sprint, and slid down banisters just to gain extra precious minutes to throw him off my trail. I didn’t think about why he was after me, only that he expected me to lead him to Archer. It was enough. I made it to the bookcase entrance to the Seer’s Tower and slipped it closed behind me without catching sight of the Bear. Maybe he didn’t know about the tower, or maybe he thought I didn’t know, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I bolted up the stairs to the warded room and immediately felt my body temperature drop with the cold.
There was a “bang” down below me, and the sound of something scraping on the floor. Was he forcing the door? Did he know about the hidden catch? What was he doing? How could Mr. Shaw switch gears so completely into a raging madman? Was it possible that the split personality of Shifters eventually made them insane like his ancestor, Will Shaw?
I shivered. Whether fright or freeze, I couldn’t tell, and not even Archer’s cashmere sweater could stop the chill. The sound of pounding on the steps stopped me in my tracks and I felt myself wrapping a mental shield around my body as if waiting for the Bear to crash through the door.
Heat suddenly poured off me and rose from my skin. I closed my eyes, feeling my mental shield go from transparent to opaque, like I was encasing myself in a solid cocoon that could protect me from Mr. Shaw’s wrath.
The Bear arrived at the top of the stairs. Literally, the Bear. Sometime during his pursuit he had changed into his animal form. He sniffed the air furiously, then began pacing the room. Why couldn’t he see me, standing frozen in the middle, wrapped in the warmth of my imaginary cocoon? I was right there with him, yet he seemed not to realize it.
And then the Bear transformed back into Mr. Shaw. First he dropped to all four feet, and then he arched his back and curled his head under his body as if in pain. The air shimmered around him like a heat mirage but then the moment vanished and the air around him stilled. Suddenly it was Mr. Shaw standing there, not the massive brow
n Bear that he had been.
“You are in so much danger, Saira.” Mr. Shaw’s voice came out in a growl and I didn’t doubt his words one little bit. I closed my eyes expecting him to see me then. Maybe grab and shake me like a naughty kid, maybe worse. But nothing happened, and when I finally opened my eyes again the Tower room was empty. I stayed completely still, not trusting my body to obey me if I tried to take a step. I heard the scrape of the bookcase downstairs and then finally… nothing.
There was silence in the Tower. The only sound in the cold room was the pounding of my heart. The feeling of the cocoon I’d wrapped myself in fell away and I felt the chill in the air that I hadn’t even realized was missing.
Could I possibly have warded myself? The wards on the room didn’t keep Mr. Shaw out and I wasn’t sure how they worked anyway. But from the moment I had mentally hidden myself from him, Mr. Shaw had not been able to find me. And I was right in front of him the whole time.
I tried to do it again. I tried to find the edges of the cocoon in my mind and wrap myself in it, but it was gone. And I was cold. So cold my teeth chattered uncontrollably and I could barely control the trembling in my hands and legs.
I tiptoed down the worn stone steps and found my way back through the old headmaster’s office in the dark. The bookcase door had been forced open, so it took a couple of tries with the hidden catch before it finally swung freely and silently.
I was half-expecting Mr. Shaw to leap out at me from the shadows of the hall as I emerged from the Seer’s Tower, but the hallway was silent and empty. My shoulders didn’t relax until I was back in my North Wing and I even opened my bedroom door with extra caution.
The flutter of the curtains was my first clue that someone had been there, but when I stepped on the soft pile rug in the middle of the floor, I knew it had been Archer.
I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath until I collapsed on the bed in a puddle. What the hell had just happened? I had spent the last quarter of an hour being chased through the school by a Bear – literally. A Bear I liked and respected until he turned on me and accused me of what? Being a mixed-blood? Being of “low moral character?” When it came down to it, I felt like someone who had disappointed her dad. A dad who didn’t like who she’d become, didn’t like her boyfriend and didn’t believe she was still a virgin.
That whole series of thoughts was so weird and so foreign to my usual way of thinking, I almost couldn’t process it. First, the idea that I could ever think of Mr. Shaw as a father figure was absurd, and yet I did. Except for tonight he had always treated me with respect; like I was someone worth teaching the things he knew about. And the things he knew were totally fascinating to me. I wanted to learn from him, and I trusted him to tell me the truth.
That’s what hurt the most. I had trusted Mr. Shaw. And in my chaotic, nomadic existence, trust was rarer than diamonds or gold or the same bed more than two years running. I wasn’t even sure I trusted my mother anymore. She had lied to me more than any other person I’d ever let into my life. That actually made me question why the hell I was going to all this trouble to rescue her.
And to top it all, somehow I had managed to ward myself from being seen or caught by both a Bear and a human. Of everything that had happened, that was the one thing I looked forward to digging into. The twins didn’t know anyone who could set wards on rooms anymore so this was going to be something I researched on my own. Archer knew about warded rooms, and the Seer’s Tower in particular, so maybe in his time ward-setting was more common.
And with thoughts of Archer slipping into my room flitting through my brain, I drifted off into something resembling a coma.
Escape
About two hours later I snapped awake with a gasp. My eyes went straight to my still-open window where the cold night air flowed into the room. Strangely, I was less cold here than I’d been in the Tower room, even though I had run myself into a sweat to get there.
I got up to close the window and just as I was about to reach for the sash, a hand appeared. I barely stifled a scream as Archer pulled himself into the room. His smile immediately turned to concern at the look on my face.
“Saira! Are you well?”
“You scared the crap out of me!”
Archer winced. “I’ve never really gotten used to the American fascination with bodily functions.”
I rolled my eyes. “Seriously.”
“I’m sorry. It seemed the safest way to come here.”
“It probably is.” The pounding of my heart slowed to something less like a jackhammer. “Thank you for the rug.”
He grinned. “Getting up here with that on my shoulder was a bit of a trick. I have a new respect for firemen.” He looked around the room quickly. “Are you ready to go?”
I shrugged. “I guess so. I had a couple hours of sleep.”
Archer reached up and pulled a piece of hair off my face where drool had stuck it to my cheek. Nice. He grinned. “I see that.”
I scrubbed at my face with my hands. “Give me a minute to wash my face and I’ll be ready.” I ran out the door to the bathroom down my hall, suddenly mortified. Since when did I care what any guy thought about how I looked?
Cold water on the face, a rough towel, brushed teeth, and re-braided hair and I was back in my room feeling much more human, if not properly awake. Archer was looking at something on my dresser when I walked in. “Now I’m ready.”
He smiled and indicated a leather jacket on the bed.
“I wasn’t sure if you had a warm coat, and despite how good you look in my sweater, it’s not enough. The English cold is finally setting in.”
I picked up the soft leather and slipped it on. It was a road bike jacket, sporty and simple and totally my style. I couldn’t help it; I had to check myself out in the mirror.
“You look good in my clothes.”
I turned to him with a grin. “This jacket would make anyone look good. Thanks.”
As an afterthought I grabbed the portal map and a Maglite and shoved them in my back pocket. The pen and ink portrait I’d done of Archer was staring back at me from my dresser. I didn’t have time to wonder what he thought of it though. The minute we left the room it was game on.
It was quite an experience to scale the walls of the school with Archer at night. He was good, that was for sure. He had a solid instinct for foot placement, and he seemed to know exactly which drain pipes would support our weight before grabbing them. It was a challenging climb down, and one I could have done alone if I had to, but with Archer it was actually fun! Until we hit the ground. Suddenly the sound of baying dogs from around the front of the school assaulted us and Archer shoved me forward with powerful arms.
“Run!” His voice was a low growl in my ear, and it held all the urgency of life and death in it. So I ran. Faster than I’ve ever run in my life. The baying of the dogs suddenly changed tone to a yip and fell off. And was replaced by a deep, low growl.
Crap. Those weren’t dogs chasing us anymore. These bad guys had four-legs and the hunting instincts of both man and beast.
Archer was really fast. Vampire strength had given him speed that pushed me beyond limits I thought I had. And still the Weres were gaining on us.
We were sprinting through dense woods behind the school, in a direction I hadn’t explored before. The groundskeepers were shouting at their dogs, their voices getting further away as we outpaced them.
But the Wolves were getting closer.
I had my doubts about Archer taking on one, much less two bad-ass Romanian skinhead Weres. And I knew I was basically Were-bait, so I found more speed and kicked it in. Archer’s path seemed very deliberate and I knew he could hear me right behind him. The Wolves had stopped growling now, which I took as a bad sign, since the sounds of crashing through the underbrush were getting closer.
“We’ll gain some time at the wall, but you’ll have to be fast.” He didn’t even sound out of breath. I saw what he meant a moment later. A six foot tall sto
ne wall loomed up in front of us, and Archer seemed to fly up it, practically vaulting to the top. I could already see handholds I wanted to use and my feet were off the ground a second later.
I felt a Wolf leap for my lower leg just as Archer hauled me out of the way. Then he dropped down to the other side and waited for me to jump. I didn’t hesitate, and he caught me neatly.
“This way.” His voice was low in my ear and I could barely make it out over the din the Wolves were making on the other side of the wall.
He led me to a clearing where his silver Aston Martin was hidden. Moments later we’d left the clearing behind. I looked for any sign of either men or Wolves. Nothing. I almost dared to breathe until Archer spoke. “If they’re smart, they’ll try to head us off at the main road.”
“Let’s hope they’re not smart then.”
He smiled wryly. “You run well.”
“So do you.”
“One of the few advantages.”
I winced. The few advantages to being a Vampire, he meant.
“How did it happen?” A question I’d dreaded asking.
He shrugged noncommittally. “I’m not entirely sure. Which in my experience means it has something to do with you.” His voice was more casual than it seemed possible to be. “But since it hasn’t happened in your future yet, I can’t remember it.”
“Oh God!”
“I doubt He had anything to do with it, actually.” The wry smile was back and took away a little of the nausea that hit my gut with its fist. I had something to do with him being turned into a Vampire? I can’t imagine anything worse. Guilt gnawed at me like a big, mangy rat and I turned away from Archer’s face.
He shifted gears, and then touched my knee lightly. “Whatever happened, it’s not your fault.”
“How can you say that? You can’t even remember it.” My voice cracked, and I worked to get myself under control.